Racism and immigration policy

The Richwine affair

JASON RICHWINE, a co-author of the widely trashed Heritage Foundation study on the the costs of immigration, "resigned" his post at Heritage Friday after his doctoral dissertation on immigration and IQ fell under a shadow of suspected racism. Harvard awarded Mr Richwine a PhD in 2009 for work arguing that Hispanic immigrants are less intelligent than non-Hispanic white Americans, that this gap has a genetic basis, and that immigration policy should discriminate against less intelligent groups of people, albeit under the cover of the language of "low skill" and "high skill" immigrants. Is this really racist?

Following a useful summary of Mr Richwine's thesis, Robert VerBruggen of National Reviewmakes a plea for letting science, rather than social opprobrium, settle scientific questions:

The Left’s labeling of Richwine’s argument as “racist” is especially dangerous. In modern America it is axiomatic that “racism,” whatever it is, is wrong — and this is a good thing. It therefore is a mistake to define racism to include falsifiable hypotheses in addition to racial hatred. If Richwine’s view is racist, what are we to do if it turns out to be correct?

It's easy to sympathise with Mr VerBruggen's gist. If scientists are to ferret out even uncomfortable truths, they cannot be made to feel that they will be punished for it. Yet racism has always been predicated on falsifiable hypotheses about racial inferiority. No one has defined racism to include the assumption of hereditary racial inequality; that's simply an assumption racists tend to have. If Mr Richwine's view "turns out to be correct", what we are to do is to acknowledge that the racists were right all along—that racism has, to some extent, a valid scientific basis. People are understandably a bit touchy about this possibility. However, the subject is not fraught because "the left" has loaded it with toxic racial politics. It's fraught because the scientific validation of hereditary racial inequality would imply that there's something to be said for the racist convictions that made America's brutal history of slavery, apartheid, and colonial genocide possible. That conservatives have a tendency to minimise the savage enormities of America's racist history, to dismiss even a little interest in it as "political correctness" run amok, helps explain their related tendency to see hostility to work like Mr Richwine's as unduly politicised bullying aimed at shutting down necessary rational inquiry.

Now, I don't think the subject or conclusion of Mr Richwine's dissertation is out of the bounds of reasonable discourse. Yet I think a suspicion of racism is perfectly reasonable. Grad students can choose from an infinite array of subjects. Why choose this one? Who are especially keen to discover a rational basis for public policy that discriminates along racial lines? Racists, of course. Anyone who chooses this subject, and comes down on the side vindicating racist assumptions, volunteers to bring suspicion upon himself, to expose his work to an extraordinary level of scrutiny. Were Mr Richwine's dissertation a model of scientific rigour, he might easily enough survive this scrutiny. However, according to Daniel Drezner, a political scientist at Tufts, it's not exemplary work:

I've perused parts of Richwine's dissertation, and … well … hoo boy. Key terms are poorly defined, auxiliary assumptions abound, and the literature I'm familiar with that is cited as authoritative is, well, not good. It's therefore unsurprising that, until last week, Richwine's dissertation disappeared into the ether the moment after it was approved. According to Google Scholar, no one cited it in the four years since it appeared. Furthermore, Richwine apparently didn't convert any part of it into any kind of refereed or non-refereed publication.

When we come upon a piece of social science that is weakly researched and poorly argued, it's reasonable to suppose that the "conclusion" is actually a fixed point, a presupposition, and that the main body of the work had been contrived to support it. In this light, it's important to remember why Mr Richwine's dissertation became a subject of controversy. Mr Richwine had co-authored an abysmally rigged study with then-colleague Robert Rector that cast Hispanic immigrants as welfare leeches draining the lifeblood from the body politic.

I suspect that Mr Richwine may have been able to survive either controversy taken in isolation. Had he not just argued, in an extremely tendentious fashion, that Hispanic immigrants are, on the whole, parasites, he might have endured public criticism of his dissertation. Had he not in his dissertation argued that Hispanic immigration ought to be limited on grounds of inferior Hispanic intelligence, he would have endured the firestorm over the risible Heritage immigration study, as Mr Rector did. Taken together, however, these two works produce a strong impression of hostility to Hispanics—they're parasitical because they're a bit dim as a breed, you see—which would be very hard to dispel. It's easy to see why Heritage let Mr Richwine dangle.

Nevertheless, Mr VerBruggen, sees "a shocking unwillingness on the part of Heritage to stand up to bullying and protect the academic freedom of its researchers". Michelle Malkin says that Mr Richwine was "strung up by the p.c. lynch mob for the crime of unflinching social science research", which she finds "chilling, sickening and suicidal". This sort of indignation speaks more to the right's failure to take seriously the history and reality of American racial injustice than it does to Mr Richwine's fate. As long as conservatives are inclined to think that Mr Richwine was "bullied" and "lynched" for his brave empiricism, instead of having been sunk by the repugnant prejudice exposed by the shoddiness of his work, non-white voters will continue to flock to a party less enthusiastically receptive to the possibility of their inferiority.

Thank you for that background. Had I read only a headline or snippet on this, the reaction of VerBruggen and company may have seemed more applicable. The silencing of Larry Summer's on political grounds due to his valid line of inquiry comes to mind, and I expect is the kind of example that looms large in the minds of others in considering apparently similar scenarios. I wonder if VerBruggen or Malkin considered the Richwine/Rector study.

My problem with the Richwine thesis is that while the basis of his observation was correct, that Hispanics have a difficult time assimilating into American society values (I've paraphrased here for brevity), his conclusion as to why this is the case defies description, and that is where he went off reservation. I'm amazed that the professors who oversaw his dissertation missed this point. Point being, that one finalizing statement blew the credibility of his thesis, and in the process has caused a firestorm backlash they should have seen coming in doing so, not to mention the credibility risk to Harvard's storied and very stringent standards degrees programs.

I don't know if that basis is correct. Studies have consistently shown, generally, that fresh immigrants rarely learn to speak English as well as Spanish; first gen Hispanics (i.e. they were born in the US, their parents elsewhere) learn to read, write and speak English as well as Spanish; and 2nd generation Hispanics only know English. Sounds like assimilation to me.

The same has been true, of course, of every wave of immigrants in our history. The first generation struggles to learn English -- some do learn it well, but many fail to. There is no obvious reason why Hispanics should be any different in this regard.

Reading the write up it seems the author is a bigot who is more than willing to condemn conservatives, ignore America's greatness and not even acknowlege the eventual correctness of America's direction dispite the thought process of writers and speakers such as the author that would rather take freedom away form anyone who does not think like the author thinks. The author seems to beleive that some people are more equal than others and only ceertain people that the author approves of should be allowed freedom of thought and freedom of speech. This is a thinnly disguised hit piece in support of political correctness.

I can understand that nobody wants to take the time to parse some dude's PhD thesis, without getting paid to do so. But to assume that it's shoddy based on some other dude's say-so - especially when much of other dude's say-so amounts to,"And nobody else likes it either" - is lame. What about the say-so of his Harvard advisors?

Very well put. Like you, I was less-than-impressed with the italicised quote supposed to provide an enlightening critique of what was wrong with the original PhD dissertation.

This by no means suggests that Richwine is, or is not, racist. Just that the blog post, well written as it is, spends a lot of time describing the alleged racist background of the conservative movement, and not quite so much energy debunking, if need be, the problematic points of the dissertation.

The operative word in what you wrote is "association." As in, "Guilt by . . . "

What a researcher writes is either true or false. The category into which it falls is determined by the evidence uncovered and conclusions drawn from that evidence.

There was a Dr. Shockley some years ago who was criticized for what many regarded as his racist views. He was also the man most responsible for the invention of the transistor. If we had evaluated his work in physics based on his political beliefs then today we would still be using radios with vacuum tubes.

There are those who vet the evidence and these are called scholars. There are also those who ignore the evidence and rely on supposed political opinions and these are called witch-hunters.

If you can't look through the posts above and see how the two most crucial pieces of his thesis are nebulous[IQ and Hispanic], it's because you don't want to.

Karl Marx was a researcher who had a PhD. Milton Friedman was a researcher who had a PhD. They have two very opposing views, yet both were awarded PhDs.

Before the discover of 'germs' people were conferred the title of Dr. spouting off non-sense theories related to patient sickness after surgery and conducting non-sense research, but they were awarded non-the-less. Did them having degrees in medical science make it any more true? It certainly did to those that wanted to believe them.

Now, lets say we go back in time and have an aspiring MD that associates with people that have a standard theory for post-surgery sickness that is not 'infection', what view is this aspiring MD likely to develop? When people point out how nebulous the basis of his research is and point to the people he associates with as evidence of biased thinking clouding research, is that because they're having a which hunt or because they see that he's biased and done research to suit his bias?

You do realize that some very noted Harvard scholars had their work discredited after a review quite recently. That work was held as the reason behind austerity for many countries - for MANY years. It had faulty calculations, and you know why it ended up with its conclusions? Because it suited the authors.

You can conduct research to say anything you want once you use nebulous terms like Hispanic[WHAT IS A HISPANIC???], and culturally biased tools like an IQ test. And it's quite clear from the 90%Debt-GDP austerity study that even at Harvard sometimes things slip through the cracks.

Also, Ortiz & Telles found that after 4 generations there is a significant lag in educational outcomes. Richwine notes in his dissertation that regardless of the cause, these differences are persistent and no one appears to know how to remedy them. The inevitable result is that you have a less skilled workforce and lower per capita income levels.

Perhaps in future genomic research will uncover the causes of thesse differences.

"Dr Yang is also candid about the possibility of the 1,000-genome project revealing systematic geographical differences in human genetics—or, to put it politically incorrectly, racial differences. The differences that have come to light so far are not in sensitive areas such as intelligence. But if his study of schoolchildren does find genes that help control intelligence, a comparison with the results of the 1,000-genome project will be only a mouse-click away."

a) research on the importance of cognitive ability on macro-economic development (see 'Cognitive Capitalistm Rindermann)

b) Like other behavioural traits, it is heritable (Steven Pinker, 'My Genome' NY Times Jan 2009).

c) There are persisting group differences controlling for SES. Note Ortiz & Telles found that after 4 generations there are major gaps in outcomes. In contrast earlier waves had assimilated after 3 generations.

d) Genomic research is showing that group differences may have both environmental and evolutionary causes. The survey by Snyderman & Rothman also showed far more researchers consider environmental and genetic variation to be the causes of group disparities, than those who consider them to be due to environmental factors alone.

"This sort of indignation speaks more to the right's failure to take seriously the history and reality of American racial injustice than it does to Mr Richwine's fate. As long as conservatives are inclined to think that Mr Richwine was "bullied" and "lynched" for his brave empiricism, instead of having been sunk by the repugnant prejudice exposed by the shoddiness of his work, non-white voters will continue to flock to a party less enthusiastically receptive to the possibility of their inferiority."

I think Mr. Richwine's thesis is nonsense.

Same as this TE article.

If Mr. Richwine is wrong then he can be refuted by peer review. He can be refuted by unveiling errors in his methodology or, even, his arithmetic. This is what scholars do.

Running off at the mouth in order to be politically correct is, increasingly, what TE columnists do. Especially WW.

Who is this "Right" about whom WW writes? Are these people who vote Republican? Are they southern Democrats -- historically about the most racist bunch in America?

And, even if this mysterious "Right" does "fail to take seriously" America's racist past -- how does that either add or detract to Mr. Richwine's evidence? If Mr. Richwine were a bleeding-heart GLBT Native American and said that things fall up when we drop them, would we then consider the Law of Gravity repealed?

There have been many recent instances of falsified documents being uncovered and of articles in scholarly journals shown to be false. If Mr. Richwine's is one such falsification then let us muster evidence and demonstrate such a thing.

I had to defend a doctoral dissertation. It is hard work. Every citation becomes fair game and this is as it should be. But, I was lucky -- WW wasn't on my examination committee. If he had been, I think I can imagine his first question: "Before we get to the evidence, Mr. Andros, please tell us your political views."

In 2010, The Economist showed no similar PC sensibilities when it published research suggesting that the major differences in mean IQ levels between nations might be in part accounted for by disease and parasite loads http://www.economist.com/node/16479286. In that article, these differences were acknowledged without tediously invoking America's (or the rest of the world's) history of racism.

Derbyshire never actually presented facts, studies, or moved beyond mere fear-mongering and prejudice, so it isn't really fair to include him in this discussion.

Richwine was indeed bullied, but his previous work was also largely discredited and his overall assertion that lower IQ immigrants could not progress in the US was flawed given the exact same situation with Italian and Irish immigrants during the 20th century.

Race/IQ and its implications are definitely important to look into at some point, but the people who usually start the discussion are bigots and fools, which is a shame. Charles Murray made a reasonable (if flawed) attempt, but since then we've seen racist after racist with very few scientists or sociologists in between.

All that said, the treatment of James Watson was an awful, PC-driven shame and you have a point.

I might be wrong, but from what I understand some of his sources were discredited in the following years. And of course, his paper was never a peer-reviewed scientific one to begin with so it wasn't expected to be firmly rooted in reproducible empiricism.

All you're saying is that someone else found flaws. That still doesn't address the underlying question: if his paper was so bad, why did Harvard and his supervising professor not notice, why did they issue an PhD? Is a PhD from Harvard just a rubber stamp on a paper?

If the paper's sources were not discredited, what basis would the reviewing professor have to not accept Richwine's paper?

Do social science paper reviews involve extensive research on each individual citation the same way scientific journals do? It would be much more difficult simply because there would by definition be assumptions and causation/correlation problems that don't exist in empirical, reproducible lab results.

It doesn't seem to me to be impossible that differences would show up in statistics between groups that have significantly different genetics (ie race or gender). The question of what those differences actually are is the problem, as is the fact that any differences if found would get translated into attitudes which are unacceptable to a cohesive society, and they also incidentally render a merit based system inequitable.

Here are the misconceptions that underlie a lot of this. Biologically / genetically, the five so called races don't hold up as such. Then, even if they did, there is difficulty defining them. What is white ... are Arabs white or Hispanic ... is Asian all one thing ... what about Africa, it is a huge place with 50 countries currently, and a large diaspora ... are Jews a race ... if you speak Spanish and are from, say, Chile, and you are of African descent, what are you ... are you as Hispanic as a Spanish speaking Chilean of German descent or what ... the problems are endless.

"Scientists studying the DNA of 52 human groups from around the world have concluded that people belong to five principal groups corresponding to the major geographical regions of the world: Africa, Europe, Asia, Melanesia and the Americas.

"The study, based on scans of the whole human genome, is the most thorough to look for patterns corresponding to major geographical regions. These regions broadly correspond with popular notions of race, the researchers said in interviews."

Yes, these phenotypes really do exist. It is a far cry from there to the kinds of interepretations R. is making. And: which of these phenotypes is the "Hispanic" one, would you say? Spain is part of Europe so it would seem "Hispanics" are part the same genome-group as the US-ians, for instance.

LBary - "And: which of these phenotypes is the 'Hispanic' one, would you say? Spain is part of Europe so it would seem "Hispanics" are part the same genome-group as the US-ians, for instance."

Most people have no trouble categorizing themselves accurately according to genetic background. It takes a special kind of sophistication to pretend the categories are imaginary or hopelessly vague.

"Racial groupings match genetic profiles, Stanford study finds.

"According to Neil Risch, PhD, a UCSF professor who led the study while he was professor of genetics at Stanford, the findings are particularly surprising given that people in both African-American and Hispanic ethnic groups often have a mixed background. "We might expect these individuals to cross several different genetic clusters," Risch said. This is especially true for Hispanics who are often a mix of Native American, white and African-American ancestry. But that's not what the study found. Instead, each self-identified racial/ethnic group clumped into the same genetic cluster.

And how was the dividing line between Europe and Asia demarcated in this article from over 10 years ago?
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And how was Central Asia accounted for, considering that has been deemed a giant mixing bowl of mankind over the millennia?
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And by extension, how are the steppes accounted for (see Lenin, who was a mutt in the extreme)?
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As an aside, by Asia, are you (and/or the article) saying people have the same impressions of Chinese as they do of the varied peoples of India? This 10 plus year old article wasn't clear on that.
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And how does one account for exceptions, like cases of relative cultural homogeneity but genetic diversity, like with the Japanese?
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Or cases of other, very diverse populations, like in several Latin American countries, with large mestizo populations?
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Now this statement further in the article sounds more reasonable, and prudent of a claim:
""What this study says is that if you look at enough markers you can identify the geographic region a person comes from,"
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But don't see how gross generalizations can be made on intelligence from traceability of DNA markers...Seems some outliers/exceptions on certain diseases and that is about it...

"Now this statement further in the article sounds more reasonable, and prudent of a claim:
'What this study says is that if you look at enough markers you can identify the geographic region a person comes from,'"
Right, it's possible to determine from genetic similarity what region of the world a person's ancestors came from, but it's absurd to imagine that genetic similarity might extend beyond trivialities like appearance to substantive characteristics.

I am not inclined to support Richwine's views on Hispanic immigrants and their intelligence - I am sure you could have said the same thing about the Germans, the Irish, the Italians, the Greeks, and even Asians at some point or the other in American history. I also suspect that he did not sufficiently control for their socioeconomic backgrounds or their educational level, and if what 'Graham Rowe' below says is right, the man is a racist wearing the guise of empiricism.

What is shameful, however, is that this man was bullied into losing his job. We allow goddamn Stormfront to operate, so why not a researcher, even if a bigoted one? We now gave racists their martyr who, in their minds, was drawn and quartered for his speaking truth to power.

In academia, of course, he'd have academic freedom for his opinions, but wouldn't have a lot of traction because of shoddy research. As supamak suggests, a large part of the Heritage Foundation's raison d'etre is to make a certain kind of conservatism palatable; Richwine was doing the opposite.

This particular matter is just an example of why the GOP, now utterly dependent on a significantly racist base, isn't going anywhere with Hispanics. A bit of panic among Republican pols after the last election is not going to change anything.
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The Republican Southern Strategy metastasized into the Republican Racist, Jingo, Intolerant, Obscurantist Noose over the last couple of decades. No way out; it's too late. It will be interesting to see how we can reassemble a sane center-right party once we get rid of the Yahoos.

They aren't going to go anywhere with hispanics because the majority of hispanics have bought into the entitlement mentality. Polls show they want even more Big Government. After all, most of them don't pay for the "free stuff". It's the Democratic way.

You could help the GOP in no better way than by dismissing tens of millions of people as racists simply for supporting that party. There are real and legitimate reasons to take the position they do on immigration, and many of the bad things they say about much of black culture-- thin-skinned, emotional, shortsighted, violent-- are both accurate and denied or soft-peddled by the Left. I don't think they're wise to act as they do, but it's mindless and dismissive of you to tar them all with the brush that requires the least thought and complexity from you.

"the right's failure to take seriously the history and reality of American racial injustice"

Will, the centrality to the Left of blaming 17th through 19th century America for what is now termed "racism," which was simply considered "normal" for millennia by pretty much everyone in the world, probably explains a considerable amount of the Right's irritation with their stance.

There's also a lot of "wealth bias"-- only wealthy nations have the luxury and time to indulge in such well-researched self-abnegation, and so we don't have detailed studies of their own examples of virulent racism by poor nations of Africa, South America or Southeast Asia. The rise of racism-bashing in India at the same time as its rise in prosperity is no coincidence. This imbalance strongly distorts the picture of racism in general.

The Left's perspective on racism includes and emphasizes the parts that support their moral narrative, and ignores, denies and downplays the ways that would undermine it-- like the fact that it's part of every human's nature. It is not credible.

I have to say that I find the deliberate wearers of hair-shirts to be nauseating. Liberal ones included.

I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say. Because everyone else has done it, and for all of time, we should ignore it when it happens today? Or because simply because we're smarter and richer today, we shouldn't try to better ourselves?

I'm trying to say we shouldn't beat ourselves up about this more than we do anyone else about their racism. I have no problem talking about and condemning racism, but the enforcement of that ideal is lopsided.

I also think that idealism like this derives from societal wealth, so it makes no sense to hold people of the past to our standards. If they'd been as wealthy as we are, in terms of the low cost of living, of travel and of communication, to name a few aspects of our wealth, racism would have been much less acceptable back then.

Guano. Among nations that had any significant proportion of minorities in their population, without which it's perfectly easy to ban slavery and segregation, the U.S. was a leader. It also did those things a mere two to three decades behind such places as England and France, whereas I'm talking about centuries. Finally, the "advanced nations" (and it's always amazing how much the Left relies on restricting its arguments to "advanced" nations) still have far more racism than you appear to think.

So much for your "heavily trailed" stuff. Racism is so central a part of the non-theistic religion that liberalism has deteriorated into that it requires confirmation bias in you, which prevents your seeing anything but evidence for its perpetuation. I hope some day you see how deeply you're poisoning black Americans' lives by encouraging weakness and dependency on you.

- 1810: In Mexico, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla declares slavery abolished. In the following years, during the Mexican War of Independence, gradually comprehensive steps will end slavery in the new country.

- 1811: Spain abolishes slavery at home and in all colonies except Cuba,[15] Puerto Rico, and Santo Domingo

- 1820: Mexico formally abolishes slavery with the Plan of Iguala, proposed by Agustín de Iturbide and ratified the following year by him and the Viceroy, Juan O'Donojú

Anything 19th century remains covered by my point about decades versus centuries (even if it weren't discountable on other grounds, as for example in the case of Mexico and Haiti, where the abolition of slavery is largely at the instigation of ex-slaves themselves, which I don't think quite counts when considering the enlightenment of "advanced" nations). That leaves six.

1595 Portugal? Oh, I'm sure slaves from China, halfway around the world, were on every streetcorner in Portugal. There must have been a few for a law to be worth passing, but since African slaves were still perfectly legal (and the Portuguese made fortunes in dealing in them for a couple centuries afterwards), that example ranks right up there, or down there, with the U.S. banning the slave trade in 1808 (not long after your Canadian example and well before your Quintuple Treaty example) as an example of abolitionist sentiment.

1701 England? Slavery wasn't abolished in English law until the 1830s. I have no idea what distinction they drew between this case and the others, but since it was legal pretty much everywhere else in the British Empire (including the American colonies) I'd say they get very little credit for enlightenment.

1723 Russia? The serfs were Russians themselves, much like serfs in Europe hundreds of years before; so much for fighting racism. And the distinction between serfdom and slavery had to feel pretty damn thin to the Russian serfs themselves.

1683 Chile? True or not-- and I have no reason to think it's not, at least nominally-- Latin America was positively stiff with racism and lack of social mobility for "the wrong sort" as they were probably thought of, for centuries afterwards. But "free," they were. Breathtaking accomplishment.

1865-- After a long, bloody civil war with hundreds of thousands of deaths, the economy of half the country is bankrupted by the abolition, nevertheless, of slavery. No other country in your list ever acted so dramatically and costly against its own deep economic interest for a moral cause. Yes, a leader-- the abolition of slavery in America was vastly more impressive than that anywhere else.

That's without even getting into fighting racism. As I said, fighting it is more evident in rich countries because of wealth bias, and both it and racism itself are particularly visible in the U.S. because it's far and away the most diverse rich country. But do you adjust for that, or adjust enough? No. Racism is universally part of human nature, but that's inconvenient to the guiltmongers pushing "the progressive narrative."

Spain and its former colonies? There were next to no slaves in Spain itself, which made abolishing it a far easier political task. And abolishing it in all but three of its economically most important colonies strikes me as a pretty empty gesture. Almost certainly slaveowners in its other colonies sold their slaves to owners in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo before the law came into effect, where they weren't freed until after the American Civil War, and anyone freed by it would have had nowhere to go, and would essentially have become sharecroppers or wage-slave inhabitants of "company towns." In any case hundreds of thousands of Spaniards did not die over it.

When it comes to slavery and segregation the U.S. was essentially not much different from the rest of the civilized world.

>> Almost certainly slaveowners in its other colonies sold their slaves to owners in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo

Please stop making up "facts" as you may see fit. So far every claim you have made has been pushed back with fact such as those listed above, and when little is left you simply assume that slaves were sold to Cuba, with no evidence for it.

>> When it comes to slavery and segregation the U.S. was essentially not much different from the rest of the civilized world.

This is where you started. I gave you ample evidence to show that is not true. Restating it might make you feel better but it is still false. The USA trailed the emancipation and desegregation movement.

In fact that is one more way in which the USA continues to trail the civilized world when it comes to race. While many other countries would hardly start down the road of defending past policies, a not insignificant portion of Americans continue to fly the Confederate flag, both literally and figuratively speaking.

What you provided was not "ample evidence," but a pack of pathetic historical sound bites, factoids culled from Wikipedia. Don't get mad at me that your beliefs are so easily debunked; you're the one that chose to hold them.

Thanks for proving my point about confirmation bias. To you, all roads lead to what you believed before.

He didn't mince words in the abstract
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I think George J. Borjas (the chair), Christopher Jenks and one other guy have some explaining, since they put their signatures to this piece as worthy of acceptance.

Yes, its racist, and follows a bit of a tradition, including eugenics, in this country.
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I didn't notice any mention of Richwine's possible contributions to "white advocacy" or Alternate Right web sites.
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An oversight? Requires confirmation?
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1. Is he wrong about anything though? Dr James Thompson is offering a bottle of French wine to anyone who can show that he is.

2. Why is the issue of group differences so surprising? And what are you going to say if/when genomic research identifies the alleles linked to various behavioural traits? What if they do vary across populations?

"Dr Yang is also candid about the possibility of the 1,000-genome project revealing systematic geographical differences in human genetics—or, to put it politically incorrectly, racial differences. The differences that have come to light so far are not in sensitive areas such as intelligence. But if his study of schoolchildren does find genes that help control intelligence, a comparison with the results of the 1,000-genome project will be only a mouse-click away."

At any rate who was dumb enough to let this fly as the basis of a PHD? IQ tests are so culturally biased it's not even funny.

Simple example: the use of prime numbers and square roots - if these things have no cultural significance to you, you aren't going to care about/remember them. Yet they show up on IQ tests - why would a Mexican farmer[or any farmer] need to remember the square or cubed root of anything? Does that indicate lesser problem solving skills[basic intelligence]? or does it indicate problems to be solved with memorized tools not universally relevant.

Do a simple IQ test and think about all the things things that are biased - outside of the pictures and maybe the anagrams how are these tools found to be equally necessary across cultures? and or the basis of intelligence?

If you're going to measure people's ability to solve problems, do it in a logical and even way for the best results.

While we are at it, lets note that pioneers of IQ tests like Binet were quite frank about their skepticism of quantifying the intelligence of a normal person to a single number.
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Then lets keep in mind that our understanding of genetics may be imperfect, and that genetic differences and human concepts on race don't always match.
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Let alone the fact that it is even murkier when delving into sociobiology, as opposed to say noting temporary blue birth marks in babies in Mongolia and Japan.
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And, then lets keep in mind that Latin America is noted for large mestizo populations, which means, large mixed populations (in addition to blancos and indiands). Have fun making genetic-based generalizations there.
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I suspect there is much more that gets glossed over. I just haven't had time to go re-review this stuff. Surprised that people still regurgitate it (kind of like the Bell Curve way back when).

They show up on what IQ tests? And where can you simply "do a simple IQ test"? Those online things are not IQ tests, and don't even approach what one actually looks like.

Actual IQ tests are culturally neutral. They are language neutral. There are no questions about square roots.

This reminds me of that episode of Good Times where JJ's parents go to the school to complain about the supposed IQ test he took, which contained questions about historical events and figures. It's obvious when I hear people like you complain about IQ tests, you've probably never seen one in your life.

Your epeen is so huge, I wish mine were that big. How about a mensa workout for you then: http://www.mensa.org/workout
see what shows up...or i'll save you the thirty minutes you wont spare anyway: at least 2 puzzles that involve prime numbers and square roots...on this 'simple IQ' test, assume that a 98% mark is 131- just like mensa do...unless ofcourse...they've never done mental aptitude testing either.
Before this internet cowboy responds - yes this is not an IQ test, it's simple workout modeled after a mensa exam, the pass mark for which is 98%, which they translate to 131 on an IQ test - how do I know what they translate it to on an IQ test? Because both those scores are the cutoff point for entry - ie, equivalent. It's modeled off on an actual exam and this is the closest you can get to the real thing online - it is not however exactly the same.
Bet you see a math puzzle or two with square and cubed roots...but don't take my word for it, check it out: http://www.mensa.org/workout
Genius.
Two examples:
Sally likes 225 but not 224; she likes 900 but not 800; she likes 144 but not 145. Which does she like - 1600 or 1700?
Feedback
Sally likes perfect squares.
Following the pattern shown in the number sequence below, what is the missing number?
1 8 27 ? 125 216
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Each number is the cube of the sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I meant to say that the NSA and APA Taskforce found tests aren't biased against different groups - that is they register differences rather than create them.

The reality is that psychometric testing is very effective at predicting educational outcomes and problem solving ability - hence the continued use of SAT's, tests by the military and thousands of corporations.

Tests are also predictive across different groups.

No doubt it will take more research like this by Rindermann, or that undertaken by the Beijing Genomics Institute to resolve these debates that flare up from time to time.

Strangely enough, I've been coming to dislike this man's policy suggestions less the more and more I've commented on this post.

I'm definitely not retracting my statements re - IQ tests being biased - my example above re the cube root/square root puzzle should be pretty apparent that a certain level of academic achievement or performance is necessary to complete that exam[and thus it's not an unbiased test or raw intelligence].

YES that isn't an exact IQ test, but it parallels the Mensa test, which parallels the IQ test - and it's the best thing I could find online so work with it. Questions like that do find their way onto IQ tests, and this is without me TRYING to think of the bias that could creep into its design.

BUT I am starting to think JR is less racist than he originally appeared, reason being: he didn't suggest banning Hispanics, he suggested a policy favouring "highly skilled"[smarter] migrants. Now, minus the IQ test and focus on the skill level and I don't really have a problem with that.

The man never actually suggested Hispanics shouldn't be allowed into the country because they are dumb. He said dumber migrants, including the dumber Hispanic migrants should be barred from entry..which is very douchey, but not really racist. But when put together with his thesis the impression is: Hispanics are dumber than white people, let's try to keep them out.

And while I have an in the flesh follower or HBD there's a question I've always wanted to ask:

What's the HBD explanation for the difference in average IQ between African Americans and Sub-Saharan Africans? I've seen once it's 80-90 vs 60-70.

Now, this question is definitely not an indication of my belief in HBD, but I am curious as to how it's explained away by proponents of HBD. I mean, it's supposed to be genetic right? There's about a 500 year gap between the two groups, what's the HBD explanation?

About empiricism, does this dissertation define "Hispanic" and if so, how so? People with most traceable DNA to Spain/Portugal? Within that geographical area, do people of Basque and Celtic origin count? The Berbers? What about Semitic origin, given all the Arabic and Jewish heritage?

What about Afrolatin people, Latin Americans who are descended from the Irish (some Spaniards are as well), Hispanized Native Americans, Latin Americans of Eastern European descent? Or, do we become more intelligent if we emigrate to Germany, Sweden, and France? What about Alberto Fujimori, is he Hispanic or Asian?

My point: "Hispanic" is a language and a culture, not a single race even if you believe races exist. If he were to do respectable academic work that were objective in any way, Richwine would have to show convincingly that races really exist biologically, and that there were a definable "Hispanic" race -- and some others to compare it to -- before going further.

Its not just IQ tests its all testing..military, schooling, etc. There is a significant gap between whites, asians, blacks and hispanics. You can forget IQ tests and look at high school graduation rates, still the same differences. He does bring up good points, why are we denying citizenship to Asians? or Educated Middle Eastern and Africans? Im white and it's a fact that Asian American's do better on IQ tests and have higher high school and college graduation rates. When this fact is stated there isn't an uproar in the "white community" saying oo this is racism those test are biased blah blah blah. In America there is a difference in intelligence between different groups. Whatever the reason is there is a difference and our immigration policy should reflect upon that. Unfortunately this is a touchy subject in America and once a prominent person is labeled "racist" its over for that person. But having said all that I've had to opportunity to work with hispanics and they are probably the hardest working group of people in America. But the future economy needs educated/skilled workers and unfortuntly certain groups are not shifting to this.

Your argument is dependent on the idea that "race" is a universally concrete category. But that's simply not the case. As recently as 200 years ago, Irish-Americans were considered to fall under the "non-white" category. Now the Irish are considered as white as white could be. And believe it or not, Iranians are technically Caucasians. But I would be willing to bet that if you asked everyone in America if they consider Iranians Caucasian, probably less than half would say that they are.

The point being, the racial categories that exist today in America in 2013 are NOT concrete. They are constantly changing, and are always reflective of the racial beliefs of the nation that they reflect.

In fact, the concept of "race" as we know it today was only invented during the beginning of the Imperialist era. It was invented by Imperialists for the sole purpose of validating the exploitation of indigenous peoples and their resources under the pretext of the "the white man's burden".

So to suggest that one's intelligence and work ethic are tied to "biological race", rather than social factors (parental guidance, economic standing, and structural inequality), is a perspective stemming directly from the Imperialist era, from the same tradition as "the white man's burden."

About certain groups not shifting towards producing educated workers - if you mean the lower rates of college attendance among Hispanic students in the U.S., it's finally changing. I don't have the citation at the moment, but it was just a week or so ago I saw a story about how the rate is up to that of non-Hispanic Whites. Good news for all of us, I'd say, except Richwine, of course.

I am a Asian American and have observed the "fact" that Asians as a group perform better that other ethnic groups. However, you have to be mindful of the nature of the immigration from different regions of the world. Due to a number of factors, US has attracted the best and the brightest from India and China while Hispanics tend to be manual labor. The difference in performance levels among different groups is due to differences in parents' achievement levels, socio-economic status, motivation levels, access to resources and not because of race.

Also, you have to remember that poverty plays a big role. It makes sense that poorer states in the USA tend to have lower education rates in just about everything. It also makes sense that groups with the highest rates of poverty (Blacks and Hispanics) would have lower test scores.

http://diverseeducation.com/article/53313/# - I was afraid I might have overstated the improvement, but it's even better than I thought:
"The rate at which Latino high school graduates enrolled in college reached a record high in 2012, and it exceeded that of Whites for the first time, a new Pew Research Center analysis has revealed."
Will Richwine's next piece call for deporting those (us) ne'er-do-well Whites?

There are no real "universally concrete categories" of anything. This is the great post-modernist lie.

Even in taxonomy, there are fuzzy boundaries between species. But that doesn't mean that there is no genetic distance between organisms. Just because you can't draw a bright white line between this group and that, does not mean that the further you move from the mean of one group, you find yourself in the middle of another.

And no, the concept of race was not invented then. It goes back thousands of years. Even the ancient Egyptians noticed it.

These are interesting studies. I am curious whether these studies draw samples from US only or more widely. Are there any studies proving that an "average" Asian living in Asia is better than an "average" White living in the US/ Europe who in turn is better than an "average" Hispanic in the native countries. I think immigration has adverse selection effects that you see in studies focussed on the US only.

Further, I suspect, even though I do not have any data to corroborate, that the immigration history is also relevant. In other words, first generation immigrants are more motivated than second generation immigrants and so on.

These are interesting studies. I am curious whether these studies draw samples from US only or more widely. Are there any studies proving that an "average" Asian living in Asia is better than an "average" White living in the US/ Europe who in turn is better than an "average" Hispanic in the native countries. I think immigration has adverse selection effects that you see in studies focussed on the US only.

Further, I suspect, even though I do not have any data to corroborate, that the immigration history is also relevant. In other words, first generation immigrants are more motivated than second generation immigrants and so on.

I concur. Black African immigrant students to the UK consistently outperform 2nd generation black Britons academically and professionally, and it appears to be due to all the reasons you have described.